Chapter 2 - THE DEAD BROTHER
The photograph was bad enough that I wanted it to be a mistake.
Snow blurred the windshield of the sedan. Streetlight reflected across the glass. The passenger’s face was caught at an angle, pale and incomplete.
But Luca knew him.
People recognize ghosts differently from strangers.
Marco enlarged the image until pixels broke across the screen.
“Could be someone who looks like him.”
Luca said nothing.
“Luca.”
“My brother had that scar.”
I leaned closer.
A thin white line crossed the passenger’s eyebrow.
“How did he get it?” I asked.
Luca looked at me as though he had forgotten I was there.
“Baseball bat. We were fourteen.”
“You were twins?”
“No. Matteo was three years older.”
Marco slipped the phone into his coat.
“We need the original footage.”
Luca looked around the destroyed basement.
“We need everything.”
The police arrived ten minutes later.
They knew Luca.
That was obvious from the way their posture changed when they saw him.
He answered questions without giving them more than necessary. I stood near the stairs and tried not to think about the fact that less than two hours earlier I had been polishing wineglasses.
Now I was in a burglarized restaurant with a man whose dead brother had apparently driven away with his former future father-in-law.
My phone vibrated.
Dad.
I stepped into the kitchen.
“Hi.”
“Emma? You still working?”
My father’s speech had improved since the stroke, but fatigue made the words slow.
“Yeah. Big dinner.”
“You eat?”
I looked at the wrecked restaurant.
“Yes.”
A lie.
“Good girl.”
My throat tightened.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Your sister came by.”
“Take your medication.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be home late.”
“Don’t work yourself sick.”
I almost laughed.
“Promise.”
When I returned, Luca was standing alone beside the broken front window.
Marco had gone to retrieve footage from the pharmacy across the street.
“You should go home,” Luca said.
“I can.”
“But?”
I hesitated.
“Mrs. Caruso is going to ask what happened.”
“I’ll tell her.”
I nodded.
Then I noticed blood on his hand.
“You’re bleeding.”
He looked down.
A piece of glass had cut his palm.
“It’s nothing.”
“There’s a first-aid kit behind the counter.”
He gave me a strange look.
“How do you know?”
“Mrs. Caruso showed me once. I helped at a neighborhood fundraiser here last summer.”
I found the kit.
“Sit.”
His eyebrow lifted.
“That sounded like an order.”
“I’m practicing.”
To my surprise, he sat.
I cleaned the cut.
His hands were rougher than I expected.
“You don’t ask many questions,” he said.
“I ask plenty.”
“Not tonight.”
“I’m trying to stay employed.”
“You stopped trying that when you served the ravioli.”
I smiled despite myself.
Then he said, “Ask.”
I taped gauze across his palm.
“Was Matteo really dead?”
Luca looked toward the snow outside.
“There was a fire.”
“Did you see his body?”
“No.”
That answer came too quickly.
“Why not?”
“Because there wasn’t enough left to identify visually.”
My hands stopped.
“DNA?”
“Dental records.”
I waited.
He understood.
“You think someone changed them.”
“I think your dead brother was photographed an hour ago.”
Luca stared at me.
Then, unexpectedly, he smiled.
“You’re very direct.”
“I clean rich people’s bathrooms. It destroys your fear of them.”
He laughed.
A real laugh.
It disappeared when Marco returned.
“The pharmacy gave me the file.”
He opened a laptop on the counter.
We watched.
At 8:41 p.m., Victor Bellini’s sedan pulled up.
At 8:43, Victor stepped out.
At 8:44, the passenger door opened.
The man who emerged wore a dark coat and baseball cap.
He turned toward the camera.
Luca gripped the counter.
It was Matteo.
Older.
Thinner.
But unmistakably the same man in the family portraits I had dusted for almost a year.
Matteo crossed the street and entered Caruso’s.
Seven minutes later, he came out carrying a metal case.
The missing safe.
Victor helped load it into the trunk.
Then Matteo paused.
He looked directly toward the pharmacy camera.
And smiled.
Luca whispered something in Italian.
Marco shut the laptop.
“He wanted you to see him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Luca’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
Everyone froze.
He answered.
“Moretti.”
Static.
Then a man spoke.
“Still eating Teresa’s ravioli?”
Luca’s face emptied of emotion.
“Matteo.”
A laugh came through the speaker.
I could hear it from three feet away.
“Hello, little brother.”
Luca closed his eyes.
For one second, he was not Luca Moretti, businessman, feared name, owner of half a skyline.
He was somebody’s brother.
“Where are you?”
“Not even a hello?”
“You’ve been dead twelve years.”
“According to you.”
“According to everyone.”
“That was convenient.”
Luca’s jaw flexed.
“What do you want?”
“You always did skip the sentimental part.”
“What do you want?”
“The same thing I wanted twelve years ago.”
Luca looked at Marco.
“What?”
“The truth.”
The line went dead.
For several seconds, none of us spoke.
Then another phone rang.
Mine.
Unknown number.
I stared at it.
Marco’s expression changed.
“Don’t answer.”
But the screen displayed a text before I could move.
A photograph.
My apartment building.
Taken tonight.
Beneath it:
GO HOME, EMMA.
My blood turned cold.
Luca took the phone from my hand.
Another message arrived.
YOUR FATHER SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY FOR YOUR CURIOSITY.
Everything inside me stopped.
“Dad.”
I grabbed my coat.
Marco blocked the door.
“Emma.”
“Move.”
“We send people first.”
“My father is there.”
“Exactly.”
I tried to push past him.
Luca caught my shoulders.
“Listen to me.”
“No, you listen to me. My father has nothing to do with this.”
“I know.”
“Then get out of my way.”
“I’m taking you there.”
The drive felt endless.
I called Dad six times.
No answer.
My sister didn’t answer either.
By the time we reached my building, I was shaking so badly I could barely open the SUV door.
Two Moretti security cars were already outside.
I ran upstairs.
“Dad!”
The apartment door was unlocked.
I shoved it open.
The living room lamp was on.
His cane lay beside the couch.
“Dad?”
No answer.
I ran to his bedroom.
Empty.
My knees nearly gave out.
Then I heard water.
Bathroom.
I opened the door.
Dad sat on the closed toilet lid wearing pajamas, annoyed and confused.
“Emma?”
I grabbed him.
“What happened?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you answer?”
“My phone died.”
“Where’s Sarah?”
“Went home.”
I held him tighter.
He patted my back.
“You’re scaring me.”
Luca appeared in the doorway but stayed outside.
Dad looked past me.
“Who’s that?”
“My boss.”
Dad blinked.
“You bring your boss home at midnight?”
“It’s complicated.”
“That usually means bad.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Then Luca’s security man called from the living room.
“Mr. Moretti.”
We followed.
On our kitchen table sat an envelope.
I had never seen it before.
My name was written across the front.
EMMA REED.
Inside was a photograph of me leaving Caruso’s restaurant the previous summer.
On the back:
YOU WERE THERE THAT NIGHT TOO.
I stared at it.
“What night?”
Dad’s face changed.
I saw it immediately.
“Dad?”
He looked away.
“Dad, what night?”
His hands began trembling.
Not from the stroke.
From fear.
Luca stepped closer.
“Mr. Reed, do you know my family?”
My father looked at him.
For a long moment, neither man spoke.
Then Dad whispered:
“Your father saved my life.”
Luca froze.
I felt the room tilt.
“What?”
Dad rubbed his forehead.
“I didn’t want you involved.”
“Involved in what?”
He looked at me.
“Before you were born, I worked for Antonio Moretti.”
I could barely breathe.
“Doing what?”
“Driving.”
“For the company?”
Dad’s eyes moved to Luca.
“No.”
That single word seemed to carry twenty years of secrets.
Luca sat across from him.
“When?”
“1996 to 2004.”
“My father died in 2008.”
“I know.”
“Did you know Matteo?”
Dad’s face drained of color.
“Yes.”
“He’s alive.”
Dad closed his eyes.
“I was afraid of that.”
Luca leaned forward.
“Why?”
Dad looked toward the envelope.
“Because the night your brother supposedly died…”
He swallowed.
May you like
“…I drove him to the airport.”
Before we left the apartment, Dad asked Luca to wait in the hall. That frightened me more than the photograph. Dad had spent my entire life avoiding confrontation, and now he closed the door on a Moretti as if he were an insurance salesman. “There’s one more thing,” he told me. He went to the bedroom and returned with Mom’s old jewelry box. Beneath the velvet tray was a Polaroid I had never seen. Mom stood beside Antonio Moretti outside Caruso’s. On the edge of the frame was Matteo, watching them. Dad said he found the picture after her funeral and hid it because Matteo had warned him never to speak about that night. I wanted to scream at him. Instead I asked why he had kept it. “Because throwing away proof felt worse than keeping a secret,” he said. When Luca came back inside, Dad handed him the photograph. Luca studied his brother’s younger face and said the date stamped at the bottom was two weeks before my mother died. That meant Matteo had known Emily Reed long before the fire that supposedly killed him. Marco photographed both sides and sealed the original in an evidence bag. On the back, in my mother’s handwriting, were three initials: A.M., V.B., M.M. Beside Matteo’s initials she had drawn a question mark. Luca said his father used to tell him that doubt was more dangerous than certainty because doubt made people keep looking. Dad answered that Emily had been very good at looking. I asked him whether that was what got her killed. He couldn’t answer. As we prepared to leave, Luca quietly ordered security to stay with Dad around the clock. Dad objected until Luca said, “You protected my brother’s secret for twelve years. Let me protect yours for one night.” Dad looked at him for a long time, then nodded. In the elevator, I asked Luca whether he trusted my father. “No,” he said. “But I believe he loves you.” For some reason, that answer meant more than trust. When the doors opened, Marco was waiting with news that made the night worse. Someone had already requested archived records connected to Emily Reed at three different banks. Whoever was searching had started forty-eight hours before Teresa brought the ravioli. This had not begun at the engagement dinner. The dinner had only made us notice.
